Without Him
by Alisyn Rae
Summary: Only now, when the truth of what he'd lost was bared before him could he be free to move onward. He didn't want to, but since when had Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, Chosen One ever been granted his heart's desire?


**Rating:** PG13  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> alternate universe, mild slash (male/male relationship)  
><strong>Summary:<strong>  
>Only now, when the truth of what he'd lost was bared before him could he be free to move onward. He didn't want to, but since when had Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, Chosen One ever been granted his heart's desire?<br>**Disclaimer:**  
>Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling. I own nothing. No money is being made from the creation of this work and no copyright infringement is intended. <p>

**A/N:** The Kloset HP prompt generator gave me the following:  
>Harry James PotterNeville Longbottom  
>Escaping the war with scars<p>

**Raw and unedited.**

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."  
><em>George Carlin<em>

There was a cost to being free. He felt it clearer than ever as he soared over the grounds of Hogwarts; it was an indefinable separation from all he had grown to love as well as an easier communion with the world he had come to call home. A strange mixture of opposing factors and unsettling contradictions, Harry had taken to escaping the sensations whenever they threatened to consume him. For some unknown reason, they never touched him when he soared amidst the clouds.

A flash of color from below caught his attention. A gentle touch to polished wood, a slight shifting of his body and Harry was gliding toward the figure, shadowing the steps of a man he knew well. They never spoke, but the calming presence of the soul he'd come to cherish more even than his own kept the wrongness at bay. The feeling that he was no longer needed disappeared completely on the silent journeys they took. Around loch and over hill, guarded by stone and forest, never had anything so simple been so sacred.

Neville's strides were slow and measured, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his robes, head bowed and shoulders hunched as though against a force Harry could not see. The brisk autumn wind whipped at his dark blond hair which, Harry realized, was longer than when he'd last seen it. Where before Neville had always kept it neatly trimmed and well away from his face, now the ends brushed his shoulders every time he moved. strangely, this unsettled Harry. How had he not noticed something so obvious?

Gliding around to face Neville, Harry willed him to look up, to notice him for the first time since they had started this unspoken ritual. He wanted to see Neville's eyes, wanted Neville to tell him that the strange feeling of alarm he was experiencing was unwarranted.

"Neville." His voice was little more than a whisper, but it was enough to cause the other man to lift his head.

Harry's breath caught painfully in his chest as he noticed the pallor to Neville's skin and the vivid purple circles beneath the other man's eyes: eyes that were vacant and haunted. The lack of expression as Neville stared at him caused Harry's heart to seize up and his blood to run cold. What had happened here? Had it been so long since they'd walked together? Had his absence been the thing to cause such a vibrant spirit this type of distress? It couldn't be, could it? Even after all the anguish of war, were people still hurting because of him?

"Neville." Lifting a hand, he reached toward the other man's face, caressing a lightly stubbled cheek. "What's happened to you, Nev?"

Neville's eyes drifted half closed and he leaned into Harry's touch. Bringing his hand up, he placed it over Harry's, but remained silent. Harry moved in closer, but before he could say anything more, Neville suddenly jerked away from him, whipping around and striking out at a near run in another direction. Harry followed, his alarm growing, because before Neville had turned away, Harry was certain there had been tears in his eyes.

Leaning over the handle of his broom, he followed Neville as the other man raced across the grounds, past startled students, around the far side of the lake and toward the edge of the Forbidden Forest. As he approached, he began to slow his frantic pace, until he was walking quietly toward a small gap in the wall of trees. As Harry watched, apprehensive and intrigued, Neville dropped to his knees beside something standing, solitary and small in the center of a circular clearing that Harry couldn't remember ever being there before.

As he watched, Neville reached out a trembling hand, brushing aside a blanket of fallen leaves that had settled over the object. Harry couldn't help but note how gentle Neville's touch was, as though he'd been smoothing back a lock of hair and not the colorful remains of a dying season. He touched the small rectangle of stone with reverence, caressed it like a lover and something inside him seemed to break.

Harry's feet touched the ground for what felt like the first time in ages. Letting his broom fall silently to the forest floor, he approached Neville, placing his hands on the heaving shoulders before him. Harry was no stranger to torture. He had seen friends killed, watched as his failures shattered families and ruined lives. He had been beaten, broken and carelessly slammed back together by those who claimed to love him, but nothing could have prepared him for this. Neville's grief was a form of torture all its own: great, convulsive gasps, followed by raw, harsh sobs that shook the very foundation of Harry's heart.

Sinking to his knees, Harry lifted a hand and brushed aside Neville's hair, trailing a finger along the shell of his ear, a simple gesture that had always calmed Neville in the past.

"Nev. Nev. Hey, it's okay." He spoke, because he needed to hear something other than Neville's misery, needed to save the other man from the torment consuming him and, by extension, Harry.

Neville didn't respond. It was almost as if he couldn't hear Harry's soft murmurs. Sighing, Harry's eyes moved from his lover's shaking shoulders to the object that had caused him so much grief. When his eyes alighted upon it, his blood ran cold. There, carved into the stone was the reason for Neville's suffering.

**HARRY JAMES POTTER**  
><strong>1980—1998<strong>  
><strong>SAVIOR, LOVER AND FRIEND<strong>

As Neville wept, Harry felt himself rising from the ground. He reached for the other man, but his hand passed through Neville's shoulder. Desperately he tried to call out, only to find he no longer knew how. Ignorance had protected him, had enabled him to exist among his loved ones in a parody of life. All the signs had been there. Harry had simply not understood them.

Time was passing while he, Harry, remained the same. Only now, when the truth of what he'd lost was bared before him could he be free to move onward. He didn't want to, but since when had Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, Chosen One ever been granted his heart's desire?

"Harry… Harry…"

He knew that voice. She wasn't screaming now, but he'd heard her call his name before.

"Mum."

Harry hovered, torn between the past he should have had and the future he'd never know. He couldn't readily accept that, once more, he had no choice. Yet again, something essential had been torn from him. But unlike the times previously, it appeared as though his sheer dumb luck had finally run out.

Heart breaking, he turned toward the voice he'd always longed to know, but could now hardly stand to hear. Leaving the man who had held their forever in his arms grieving upon the forest floor, Harry James Potter floated reluctantly toward life's next great adventure.


End file.
